


A Beacon Burning Endlessly Bright

by innie



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Fanart, Fanfiction, Inspired by Fanart, Kingsman Reverse Bang, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-04-23 19:56:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19157896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: The tallest of them, dark-haired and striking, said something that set the rest of them to laughing and then twisted at the waist, looking behind him and seeing Harry. The plumes of smoke from his mates' fags did nothing to diminish how intenselyalivehis face was, a reckless curiosity showing in those dark eyebrows arched inquisitively over bright eyes.Harry nodded at him, an order and a plea.





	A Beacon Burning Endlessly Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anarchycox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchycox/gifts).



> Inspired by anarchycox's lovely Harry/Merlin art! Title from Air Supply's "Making Love out of Nothing at All." My thanks to deepdarkwaters for looking this over and providing a sanity check!

_Where the_ fuck _was he?_ That was all Harry wanted to know, as he ran as fast as he could manage in these boots, which was _just_ quick enough to keep from being cornered by the ugliest men he'd ever seen.

When Arthur had said that the Galahad candidates would be let loose in a club to try to "win over" a target, Harry had let some small corner of his brain fizz with elation whilst keeping most of his mind focused on the fact that Kingsman could have all sorts of reasons for such a vague order and he'd have to be mad to trust _anyone_ , from his fellow candidates to the target himself. But it had been so long since he'd got a leg over, and the other candidates were spotty nightmares with scarcely a redeeming feature amongst the lot of them. 

Teddy Shaw, the target, had nothing _but_ redeeming features, if one went for china-blue eyes, golden hair, and delicate builds. Harry did, in a big way, and it seemed Teddy wasn't above a little necking in discreet corners; it might have been sheer thankfulness that opened Teddy's hot little mouth to him, given that Harry had plucked him out of the way of Combs, who was charging forward with a grim look on his face and behaving like a very straight bull in the airy-fairyest of china shops. Harry'd had to move so quickly that he'd skipped the champagne entirely, even though a snootful would be as much of a welcome change of pace as feeling someone warm in his arms.

Teddy's arms were winding round his waist, threatening to dislodge the sash from his piratical trousers — Harry prided himself on always dressing the part, and in seducing an elfin boy he'd thought glitter and mascara and billowing fabric would be his surest friends — as Harry's tongue probed his mouth. "Gorgeous," Harry said, certain the praise would be appreciated. "I'd love to see you in your proper setting." That put a nice gloss on _it'll have to be your place_ , Harry thought. The Kingsman barracks were no place for an assignation, and Teddy would surely be more forthcoming with whatever information he harboured if he were made comfortable by being in his own space.

"Oh," Teddy said, drawing back at last and Harry saw the consternation flash across his face. "Erm, I —"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Harry heard from just behind him, in a puzzlingly familiar voice. Instinct took over and before he could match the voice to a name, he'd already ducked away and spun to face the newcomer. All he saw was a pale hand aiming a syringe his way — his vision narrowed to that, and small blame to it, because what did it matter what face his would-be attacker wore? — and he ran, trying to think through the options as he legged it. 

It could have been that Teddy had a jealous boyfriend, though it was unlikely that he'd be armed thus at all times. It could have been that Kingsman had acknowledged that he had no rivals for the NLP crown and had rolled him right into the next test, either reflexes or drug resistance. There were likely other explanations he couldn't put his finger on at the moment, but whatever the case, he'd be damned if he pressed the panic button all the candidates had been given with the promise that Bors and Bedivere would fetch anyone who called; the unspoken corollary was that any fetchee was out of the running for Galahad, and Harry had no intention of losing the title.

He got out of the club quickly enough and into the cold London air, where his thin and artfully draped clothing put him at a distinct disadvantage. A tart with a carrying voice — wearing even less than he was, brave girl — asked him with a sort of sympathetic mockery if he'd got lost on the way to a fancy dress, and he paused, panting, to laugh, and that was when he saw a group of uglies nudge one another and head in his direction.

Hands on his thighs, he assessed the approaching gang. Four of them, which was one more than he was sure he could handle on his own, unarmed as he was and with all his valuables so vulnerable. Wrenching himself upright, he took off again, running for all he was worth and looking for a landmark or a safe haven, at last edging round one darkened building. Twenty yards ahead, another group, also in black leather, clustered close together. The tallest of them, dark-haired and striking, said something that set the rest of them to laughing and then twisted at the waist, looking behind him and seeing Harry. The plumes of smoke from his mates' fags did nothing to diminish how intensely _alive_ his face was, a reckless curiosity showing in those dark eyebrows arched inquisitively over bright eyes.

Harry nodded at him, an order and a plea.

The man stalked over to Harry, looking more like a panther with every deliberate step. "Raff!" one of the men left behind called, to which he simply waved a quelling hand. Harry was already memorising the length of those pale fingers, the careless ease with which the man contained the slim strength of his body, and opening his mouth to introduce himself when the uglies' voices sounded.

"Fuckin' poof thinks he's got a right to tart around on our patch," one of them was saying to another, and Harry would normally have posed as effeminately as possible before delivering a thorough beating, but Raff's eyes were laughing at him and promising violence of the most satisfying kind, so he simply prepared to fight.

Raff's arm shot out the moment the first ugly turned the corner, catching the man by the thick neck and pounding him back against the brick. Harry grinned and threw a punch that knocked Ugly 2's skull into Ugly 3's with enough force to down them both. Ugly 1 only escaped from Raff's grip through unconsciousness, slumping to the dirty ground next to his mates. That left Ugly 4, who was brandishing a wicked blade and wearing scars that promised a lifetime of violence.

Raff didn't let him get close. Brutally efficient, he snapped the heel of his hand under the man's lantern jaw, caught him as he fell, and slung his prone body on top of the heap of the others. He liberated the knife from the thug's hand and tucked it into the belt loops of his own jeans. Harry felt his breath catch in his throat.

"Want to come with me?" Raff asked, voice a low, rumbling burr, and Harry could say nothing other than, "Yes, please."

Raff's friends had apparently scattered, but they didn't need an audience of even unconscious thugs, so Harry went where Raff led him, arousal growing with every step. Raff put Harry's back against rough brick and leaned in for a kiss that nearly made Harry forget his own name. Raff's mouth was hot, his tongue dragged slowly and deliberately against Harry's, and the scent of smoke rose up from his warm skin. One big hand spread across Harry's cheek and tilted his head up until the angle was perfect, and Harry revelled in feeling caged in, small against the wall, put into his place by a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

The hand on his cheek slipped down, fingertips dragging heavily over his Adam's apple and the soft hollow beneath it, landing on the sash at his waist. A few judicious tugs and his shirt, freed of his waistband, fell off one of his shoulders — the proper billow could only be achieved with such a loose fit — and the gleam of Raff's luminous eyes darkened gratifyingly. Strong teeth encased his bare shoulder and that big hand unwound the sash and delved into his trousers. "Please," Harry whispered, exceedingly glad he'd foregone pants in service to the mission, and Raff grinned like the very devil.

He held his hand up and Harry obligingly licked the palm. "Rafferty," Raff belatedly introduced himself.

"Harry," Harry said, licking the salt from his lips and fumbling at the button of Rafferty's worn-soft jeans. His Y-fronts were barely able to contain him, and Harry's mouth _watered_. His face was tipped up — it was a dizzying pleasure to kiss someone taller than himself, even if it was only by a hair's breadth — and his mouth plundered. Rafferty's big hand wrapped around both of them, slick silky skin sliding together within a fist that couldn't contain them both, and Harry looked down, wanting to see. He saw their cocks pulsing against each other and the end of his sash trailing on the dirty ground between two pairs of boots, the knife Rafferty had seized next to it, and gave up on sight altogether.

He closed his eyes and let his head loll on his neck, feeling the soft warmth of Rafferty's black hair against his cheek, the sucking heat of Rafferty's flushed-red mouth against the cold column of his throat, the bite of the brick against his back and catching at his hair.

"Harry," Rafferty breathed, and Harry felt every hair on his body stand on end as if to follow this new, irresistible pied piper wherever he led, and then he came with a high cry that Rafferty swallowed down. "Gorgeous," Rafferty said, spreading the slick that Harry's cock was still spilling freely over their hot skin. "Fuckin' gorgeous, you are." He came then, making more of a sodden mess of Harry's quivering stomach, and Harry wanted to _luxuriate_ in it, to sprawl languorously in a bed and have Rafferty's long fingers idly playing in the pool of their spunk on his belly.

He couldn't. He had to get back to Kingsman — as soon as he could orientate himself, as soon as he stopped looking at Rafferty as his personal pole star — where he could lock this encounter into his memory. Rafferty was not making it easy to tear himself away, appropriating Harry's brick-stained shirttails to clean them both and then tucking the soaked tails into the trousers he'd hitched back up around Harry's waist, the sash dangling uselessly. Harry frowned, trying to remember what was so important about his sash, and how that could possibly compete with the sight of Rafferty's spent cock lying against his thigh just above his pushed-down pants. Memory prodded sharply at him when Rafferty's fingers found the panic button tied inside one end of the sash; Harry yanked the sash free before the button could be pressed.

Rafferty looked startled but was appeased when Harry mutely turned his face up for a kiss. Rafferty obliged, then shivered and tucked his cock away. "Here, haven't you the sense god gave a goose?" he asked, peeling off his leather jacket and draping it over Harry's shoulders, both now bare but made asymmetrical by the marks of teeth in only one. "Come find me sometime, Harry," he said, dropping a last quick kiss on Harry's tender mouth before walking away.

Harry watched him go, the long sharp line of him — knife gleaming at his waist again — vanishing in the soft dark studded with sodium lights. He caught his breath and doubled back to where they'd made their stand, intending to confirm that the pile of uglies was where they'd left it, and felt a pinprick in his neck.

He woke up tied to train tracks, a bright light shining in his face and a man with a knife threatening him. Two men with knives in one night, plus a man with a syringe; he was clearly doing _something_ right. Laughing off the threats that did nothing but make him feel more alive, he was suddenly aware that he'd been stripped of Rafferty's jacket. He'd have to find it as soon as he turned the tables on this lout and loosed himself from the rope that was cutting into his wrists and ankles. That soft leather jacket, redolent of all of Raff's mouth-watering scents, was his prize, his breadcrumb trail back to Rafferty's strong arms, and — suddenly there was a train actually coming at him so he closed his eyes and told himself he was lucky that he'd had the best fuck of his life just that night; that was a high note to go out on.

When he returned to the barracks, Rafferty's jacket was folded neatly at the foot of his bed but all the fragrances of sweat and aftershave had been laundered out of it. Harry cursed Kingsman silently but thoroughly once he got himself in the shower, only to be reminded by the pleasant sting of hot water that he bore a very distinct set of tooth-marks in his shoulder; he'd find his man, come hell or high water, and knowing Kingsman, it would be both.

* * *

Harry'd always thought — with some justification, given the variety of honeypots he'd completed with unquestionable success — he could make _anything_ look good . . . until he tried to laugh, sultrily, around Rafferty's cock and choked himself and started wheezing, making sounds so evidently alarming that Raff hauled him up and stroked his back to calm him. Soon enough, he was settled and quiet, his mouth given over to Raff's particular blend of tenderness and deliberation, and Harry was lost in the heady way Raff kissed him. Perhaps it was just how Raff kissed everyone, only he had better not be kissing anyone else with this mind-numbing skill. Or anyone else, full stop.

"I mean it, you terrible gobshite," Raff said, kissing away the tears that had fallen on Harry's cheeks and working his way down Harry's throat, mouth pressing more lightly than either of them would have liked, as Harry had a honeypot later that night. "You cannot keep proclaiming that my trials to become Merlin comprised only one test and that was shagging you to within an inch of your life."

"I'd never lie and say it only took one inch." Harry _knew_ they were too tall for sex even in Merlin's platonic ideal of chairs, but it was tempting to fold himself on top of Raff's gorgeous lengths of limbs and cock and then let pleasure unfurl him, one petal at a time.

" _Harry_ ," Raff groaned.

" _Danny boy_ ," Harry said back, laying open-mouthed kisses down the long bridge of Raff's nose. "Kingsman found you through that jacket, which you'd left with _me_ , ipso facto, I made you Merlin." It was a peculiarly pleasing thought, being able to give Raff so meaningful a gift, to bestow a name worthy of him — and befitting his glorious, bird-of-prey eyes — on that brilliant head. "What?"

Raff's bright eyes were rolling extravagantly, and _not_ because Harry was sucking his brain out through his cock. He slid back down all that sinewy strength, intent on rectifying that particular matter. "I don't know which you must have failed more abysmally, Latin or logic."

Harry caught himself before he laughed again with his mouth so well occupied. Raff's bollocks were heavy on his tongue, and Harry _gloried_ in this, the thrill of getting exactly what he wanted, giving pleasure in what felt shatteringly like an endless feedback loop, confirming his body was his own by giving it over to the one who made the best use of it. He would think about Raff tonight when he was shagging the woman who intended to affirm her place in her family's evil empire; he'd remember the tang of his sweat, the flex of long fingers in his hair, the murmured praise in that soft burr. 

No time like the present to make memories worth keeping. Harry nudged and nosed along the length of Raff's thick cock, hands coming up to curl around the backs of long-boned thighs to steady himself. He'd worn the shoulder-holsters because he knew how much Raff liked the look of them — seeing Harry armed with weapons of his design — and felt a rush of victory when one big hand slipped from his hair to get a grip on the leather strap.

Harry obediently went pliant, going where Raff put him, his mouth sucking on whatever bit of flesh it could catch. It felt like unhurried ages before Raff's cock was sliding over his tongue, seeking the tight grip of his throat, and he shivered with the decadence of it all. Merlin's office was a clinical space for such abandon, but they'd made rather a habit of finding unconventional places in which to fuck, to snatch stolen moments.

It was perfect, Harry thought, and opened his throat to his lover. Raff held his face in his hands, those rough thumbs tracing at his cheekbones as if each zygomatic arch were Braille encoding arcane secrets of the universe. Raff's eyes — they were green, so green, how had he not noticed in that filthy alley their colour when he'd seen the red of his mouth clear enough — stared into his as Harry's throat was flooded with come.

"Harry," Rafferty said, softly, and Harry wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist — he wasn't playing the gentleman until tonight — and swallowed. "Are you close?"

He nodded, though he wanted to be perfectly still, to fix this view up the long, long lines of Rafferty's enviable body in his mind. 

"What do you need?" Raff asked, and the rasp of his voice, unquestionable dominance tempered by unshakeable gentleness, was Harry's undoing. He rose, a trifle unsteadily, to his feet, his pants soaked and threatening to stain his trousers. He hummed as Raff's big hand lay flat against his wet cock, the warmth of it soothing as he descended from the shock of coming so abruptly. That voice had so much power over him, and dimly he recognised that it was better to have this reaction to it now, when they were alone and focused only on each other, than later, when it would be in his ear as he jetted off to an exotic locale to fuck a woman he'd rather not touch. That voice, this man, could so easily be his undoing, and he found he liked the sound of that.

When he turned his face up for a kiss goodbye, a kiss for luck, Rafferty gave him one. Harry would remember all of this, and he'd come back for more after the mission was done.

* * *

Harry blinked again, unable to believe that Rafferty was on his doorstep, just as he'd longed for not an hour past. Raff was wearing threadbare jeans and a faded indigo t-shirt under a canvas bag slung casually across his torso as if he had every right to walk around London looking positively edible, and Harry's indignation lent him strength; he got one hand around Raff's warm bare forearm and tugged him into the house.

Raff didn't even bother looking around, no doubt having already divined that Mr. Pickle — as relieved to be out of the kennel as Harry was to be home early from Luxor — was taking one of his epic naps in the back garden; he focused those brilliant eyes instead on Harry's befuddled face. "What will it take, Harry?" he asked. "Do I have to tap-dance naked to get you to listen to my contributions at the Round Table meetings?"

"Try it," he invited, resolutely not letting himself sink into the image. "What's —? I'm sorry I wasn't wearing my glasses, but my shoe-phone is charged and I didn't hear it ring."

"No," Raff sighed, very much _Merlin_ at the moment, and Harry went even dizzier realising that all of that formidable intelligence and undeniable magnetism was _in his house_ , where Harry was wont to eat garbage, watch terrible telly, and wank madly to the thought of him. "It's as I said at yesterday's meeting: I've designed a new network with better security and am updating all of the knights' home terminals." Those long fingers that had held Harry so securely and tenderly and insistently in encounters past tapped at the bag resting against his hip.

"You personally?" Harry asked lightly, ragingly jealous already.

"Mmm," Merlin said, which could have meant anything; the faint pink flush on his cheeks wasn't an answer either, given that he had his head ducked down to peer into the depths of his bag. It struck Harry again how well the shaved head suited him, the way that unabashed sleekness stopped camouflaging how much of a weapon he was, six plus feet of muscle and sinew and fiendish brilliance. "Upstairs?"

"Yes," Harry said, feeling his heart thump like a bass drum with each step Merlin took that got him unwittingly closer to Harry's bedroom. He was probably close enough behind him — he kept nearly tangling their limbs together — that Raff could hear that tell-tale clangor.

Of fucking course Raff had to be omniscient about his house, knowing which closed door was the office and not even glancing down the corridor to the master bedroom. On the desk he'd had specially made out of beautiful and rare Indian and Brazilian woods, and nearly covering its two-toned surface, rested the ugly beige desktop computer he'd been given upon being knighted Galahad. Merlin dug into his bag, pulled out something charcoal-coloured and sleek, and set it on the desk, and Harry just _adored_ him excessively, too much to contain himself; he tugged like a small child at Raff's hand and pulled him out of the room and down the hall.

The satchel had migrated from Raff's hip to cover his crotch, and so it got in the way when Harry wound his arms round Raff's neck to draw him in for a kiss, but one of them evidently had a brain that nothing could derail, and before he could think, Raff had pushed him back, lifted the strap of the bag over his own head, and dumped the bag at their feet. His nimble fingers plucked just as efficiently at Harry's hem, and Harry giddily raised his arms so his shirt could be stripped off him. He was glad he was only in soft fleecy tracksuit bottoms — his uniform when he was home between missions and chasing Mr. Pickle round the garden — because he could step out of them with little fuss, though Raff eyed him like Harry's getting naked always deserved a bit of fanfare.

It was Raff's bared body that merited poetry and howls of appreciation. His leanness looked honed, musculature rippling like a brook, and he was in Harry's bedroom, a breath away from Harry's bed. "What do you want?"

Harry had wanted Raff's cock up his arse since he'd first seen it tenting the man's Y-fronts, tinted orange by the streetlight flirting with shadows. "You in me," he said. Raff looked surprised; had he expected it to go the other way, then? Harry had promised himself splendid nights of Raff under him — Harry's thumb in the hollow at his nape as his long back flexed — and Raff riding him — Harry's hands skating up his skin to draw him down for another kiss — but what he wanted now, on a day he'd not looked to have his wishes granted, was for Raff to lay claim to every inch of him.

"You'll find what you need there," he said, nodding at the bedside table, turning to look at the suddenly vast expanse of his bed and decide how he wanted to display himself. Soft touches, damp little presses, dotted his back, Raff's mouth touching down on one spot before lifting and alighting again like a butterfly. Harry arched and stretched in delight, gasping when the quick spots of heat were replaced by a solid wall of muscle at his back and Raff's long arms wound round him. Raff's cock, half-hard, was an insistent thickness parting the halves of his arse.

Raff turned them both and lifted the hand that had been petting at Harry's belly to open the top drawer of the bedside table. Harry waited for Raff to choose what he wanted, but then he felt a tongue claiming the nape of his neck and the scratch of barely-there stubble against that wetted skin as Raff buried his face in Harry's hair and kissed his head. Knees dangerously weak, Harry blindly closed his fingers round the bottle of slick and fumbled for the box of rubbers. The sparse, soft hair on Raff's chest was tickling his spine and he had no inclination to move, ever again.

"Oh, don't, Danny," he said when Raff's hand sought his cock; he was extravagantly hard already and he wanted the full Danny Rafferty experience, to come while being fucked with abandon. He twisted out of Raff's arms and pitched himself onto the bed, landing on his hands and knees. It took a moment but then there was one heavy hand on the small of his back, pressing down so that his arse popped up still higher, and the long fingers of Raff's other hand, dripping wet, were teasing at him, dribbling slick over his bollocks and opening him up with infinite patience.

Harry had not even a fraction of that, pushing back so that Raff's fingers were suddenly buried inside him. He rubbed his cheek on his own shoulder as those fingers spread, describing invisible shapes inside the clutch of his arse. "In, in, in," he demanded, and he should have planned this better, should have foregone the condom rather than waiting for Raff to pull out his fingers, wipe them dry, open the box and then the foil packet, and roll the rubber onto himself. He felt entirely alone for long moments and then he could breathe again when Rafferty's big hands cupped his bottom, cradling that wobbly softness, parting the cheeks so his cock could slide home.

"Harry," Raff said, and Harry loved, wholly, the way that voice shaped his name whenever they were joined together. It was the sound of _home_. "Tell me —"

Harry cried out, stricken, as Raff hit just the right spot, and he buckled, collarbones and cheek hitting the bed, spine making a scoop. "God," Raff bit out, rearranging his hands so that they were curling under Harry's thighs, pulling them apart in a slow elastic stretch, and Harry started to shake.

"Tell me, love, tell me what you want," Raff coaxed, and Harry could hear his own breath resound in his throat as he gasped like a landed fish. He mashed his face into the mattress to keep himself silent, but was foiled from rubbing his cock into it too by Raff's hand — at some point, his legs had been hooked outside of Raff's, dipping his backside low — already there, stroking him tenderly. "I'll give you what you want, love," Raff cajoled, fingers' rhythm syncopated against the melody of his voice, and Harry was shattering in his hands, broken apart by his cock, couldn't he see that?

"I want you." Oh, he felt so good. "I love you." Raff was _glorious_ at this, at _everything_ , and Harry was going to keep him forever. He rolled his hips and tightened his muscles to cling all the more sweetly to Raff's cock as Raff drew back.

But Raff didn't pull out to tease and slam home again; he pulled out all the way, put iron hands on Harry's hips, and flipped him so that Harry was flat on his back and Raff was looming over him with eyes of thunder. "Since when?"

"When what?" Harry asked, reaching up to pull him down, but Raff pinned his wrist to the bed with an unyielding grip and then did the same to the other one, apparently for good measure. Fine then, Harry would take what he wanted another way. He wound one leg around Raff's waist and let his toes stroke against the grain of hair on Raff's thigh. "What, darling?" he asked when Rafferty failed to grind against him.

"Since _when_?" Raff said again, and Harry was no more enlightened than he had been before. Raff looked like he wanted to shake him for his ignorance. "No, you can't."

He'd never done well with those words. "Yes, I can," he argued reflexively.

"You can what?"

"Whatever I want," he said defensively, taking the initiative and doing the grinding himself. It was more work to rub their cocks together from below, but he cheated and used both calves to press down on Raff's delectable — and decidedly non-wobbly — bottom.

"You cannot say you love me when you don't," Raff said, stonily ignoring what their bodies were doing.

"But I do," Harry protested. Danny Rafferty, in the dust-speckled golden afternoon light, naked as the day he was born, was entirely lovely and entirely loved.

Though how he'd come to love such a persistent crank of a sceptic was quite beyond him. Raff frowned and said again, enunciating exaggeratedly, "Since. When."

"Since forever. Since you tucked that knife into your belt loops. Since you scolded me by giving me your jacket. Since you kissed me like one of us would die if you didn't. Since you looked over at me." He was appalled to find that he felt smaller and less seen as the litany continued, but he couldn't stop, not while Raff's belief was visibly strengthened by each word. Feeling thoroughly miserable, he said softly, "I thought I was bloody obvious about it. And I rather hoped you loved me too."

"Love," Rafferty said, leaning down to kiss his eyelids, then flexing his arms to lift himself off the useless lump of Harry lying on the bed, "I've been arse over tit for you since I saw your pirate sash. I gave you my jacket because you already had my heart." He kissed across the length of Harry's collarbones, incipient stubble scratching the breadth of Harry's chest, and then murmured into the soft underside of Harry's chin, "I don't even know why we're arguing."

"Because —"

"Shut up, you daft sod," Raff said, fingering him and then spitting him back on his cock. Harry's head tipped back with the force of the thrust and his own cock, which had flagged, valiantly stiffened back up. "My beloved daft sod," Raff said, and a drop of precome grew into a pearl that spilled down Harry's cock.

"You are terrible," Harry choked out, freeing his wrists from Danny's grasp and running his hands up the strength flexing above him. "Terribly wonderful. Terribly loved."

"Terribly susceptible," Rafferty agreed, pulling at Harry's hair with fingers that were gentle despite the strength they could easily have commanded. Harry curled up and bit Raff's shoulder as he came. "I should have said."

"Yes," Harry said, cresting his high. He felt Rafferty's hips burning against his inner thighs and clung all the more tightly. Raff let loose a roar when he came, loud enough to wake Luxor's mighty dead, and oh, did Harry love him.

* * *

Raff snored fit to set the house shaking when he was exhausted and Harry, creeping up the stairs in his stocking feet as if anything would awaken him, at last ascended to their bedroom and just stood by their bed, looking down at his husband. Greying stubble glittered like silver on Raff's hollow cheek and angular jaw, stark against the navy blue of the pillowcase his face was pressed into.

There were weary lines on his face; they'd got past the age of having them all smoothed out by unconsciousness, and Harry loved them in any case, those marks of time that he'd seen develop on his Danny's face. Tonight they looked deeper than usual, but then Merlin had been handling Sagramore's mission and Lionel's on the other side of the globe simultaneously and they'd both gone tits-up and two knights had needed his reasoned calm and resourceful intelligence more than Harry had needed his husband to show up for their anniversary dinner.

He opened the top drawer of the bedside table to find the charging case for his glasses and saw a wrapped present next to the knife Raff had stolen from that thug eighteen years ago tonight. He paused, drumming his fingers lightly on the box, a gesture he'd stolen from Rafferty, who'd never lent any credence to the notion that Harry found his hands in motion to be utterly beautiful, then decided he'd rather unwrap his husband than a gift. Harry shucked his suit — Danny's favourite, the midnight-blue single-breasted that displayed a good length of the midnight, primrose, and purple tie — and climbed into bed in just his pants.

Fitting himself against Rafferty's strong back, he curled an arm around his waist and let his hand drift up to trace through the hair on his husband's belly. The crisp warmth under his fingertips and the vibrations from the unceasing snores were improbably soothing, and before he meant to, he fell fast asleep.

He dreamt, dreamt of a tall boy in a leather jacket who had a gorgeous smile and a gorgeous cock and a heart that he'd sent drifting over to Harry like a balloon.

In his arms, in their bed, Raff turned over in his sleep and settled back down, cosy in their shared warmth. Harry woke with the movement and stayed awake until the late morning light opened his husband's eyes. He stretched a point, declaring that the morning should still count as their anniversary, and Raff, looking up at him with smiling eyes, let him stretch it and drew him close enough that neither of them could have said where one ended and the other began.


End file.
